Times Cryptic No 27546 – Saturday 28 December 2019. Fire, fire everywhere.

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Millions of hectares (over ten million acres) ablaze. Over a thousand homes destroyed. People dead. Tens of thousands evacuated. Smoke giving our cities have the worst air quality in the world. And climate denialist politicians saying, “We’ve always had bushfires.” True, but never remotely like this. Hard to say “Happy New Year” in Australia this week!

However, you’re here for the crossword. My first pass through these clues got me nowhere, and gave me the feeling this puzzle might be a beast! Then I got a toehold in the lower right and everything flowed smoothly in a clockwise direction. So, in the end, quite a friendly creature, all finished in double quick time.

My clue of the day was 3dn, for its lovely surface. I don’t think it’s often we have two &lit. clues like 3dn and 7dn in one puzzle. Thanks to the setter for a very enjoyable puzzle.

Clues are blue, with definitions underlined. (ABC*) means ‘anagram of ABC’. Deletions are in [square brackets].

Across
1 Standard to recall Irish officer during trip (9)
TRICOLOUR – RI (IR for Irish, ‘recalled’), COL (officer), all ‘during’ TOUR.
6 Spot large place to stop over (5)
MOTEL – MOTE, L[arge].
9 Hives can be this hostile when bee’s flown out (5)
ITCHY – [b]ITCHY. The hives you get from an allergic reaction.
10 Grass worker who’s playing well? (9)
INFORMANT – the ANT is IN FORM.
11 Place to learn Polish — something pupils like? (9,6)
FINISHING SCHOOL – double definition: the first has a capital P to mislead us, the second is a truism.
13 Secure last of mouldy meat for terrier (8)
SEALYHAM – SEAL, [mould]Y, HAM.
14 Glass obtained with bulges occasionally in it (6)
GOBLET – GOT (obtained) has B[u]L[g]E[s] in it.
16 Redundant seaman severs old hawser (6)
OTIOSE – OS (seaman) severs O (old) TIE (hawser). ‘Otiose’ is a word whose meaning I never bothered finding out, but here it is: ‘redundant’!
18 One steering apple cart around heading for street (8)
COXSWAIN – COX (apple), WAIN (cart) around S[treet].
21 Charge crew under canvas for code on tablets (3,12)
TEN COMMANDMENTS – COMMAND (charge) MEN (crew) in TENTS (under canvas).
23 Outwit remaining authority (9)
OVERREACH – OVER (remaining), REACH (authority). ‘Overreach’ is more familiar in the sense that leads to falling on one’s face, but the ‘outwit’ meaning is in the dictionary.
25 Learning to conserve one foreign flower (5)
LOIRE – LORE (learning) ‘to conserve’ I (one). As so often, a ‘flower’ in Crosswordland is a river.
26 Topping device shortly to be returned by European (5)
NOOSE – NOOS (SOON, ‘to be returned’), E (European).
27 Some lumps, maybe, appearing back on a spring plant (9)
ASPARAGUS – A SPA (spring), RAGUS (SUGAR, ‘appearing back’).

Down
1 Criminal: one infiltrating the force? (5)
THIEF – I (one), ‘infiltrating’ THE F (force).
2 Charm people in Peru once, embracing tango (11)
INCANTATION – the INCA NATION ‘embracing’ T (tango).
3 Poem about Ulysses centrally with ugly conclusion? (7)
ODYSSEY – ODE ‘about’ [ul]YSS[es], ‘with’ [ugl]Y. A beautiful &lit. or all-in-in-one clue, since the Odyssey is of course about Odysseus, known to the Romans as Ulysses.
4 Master one spirit during test (8)
ORIGINAL – I (one) GIN (spirit) in ORAL.
5 Shelter whistle-blower, say, superior hauled up (6)
REFUGE – REF, UGE (E.G. U, ‘hauled up’).
6 Originally read old volume in low hide (7)
MOROCCO – R (initially Read), O (old), CC (a measure of volume), all in MOO (low).
7 Tips of plant like camellia? (3)
TEA – spelt out by the last letters of each word. I guess there’s no reason that the tips can’t be on the right, not the left!
8 Tongue a little spoiled ingesting a starter of nuts (4,5)
LATE LATIN – (A LITTLE*), ‘spoiled’, then ‘ingesting’ A, followed by N (the ‘starter of nuts’).
12 Perhaps landscape lining patio needs replacing (3,8)
OIL PAINTING – (LINING PATIO*) ‘needs replacing’.
13 After brief stop, service stock item (9)
SHORTHORN – SHORT (brief), HO (stop: Chambers says this use is obsolete, and Westward Ho the Wagons certainly sounds more like ‘go’ than ‘stop’), R.N. (Service). Nicely disguised definition.
15 Community retains hospital surrounded by dump (8)
TOWNSHIP – OWNS (retains), H[ospital], ‘surrounded by’ TIP.
17 Flog business during sudden upswing (7)
SCOURGE – CO ‘during’ SURGE.
19 Specimen from sewer more than enough to stop sister (7)
SAMPLER – AMPLE in SR. Needlework.
20 Food for Africans sometimes stored in Blenheim Palace (6)
IMPALA – hidden answer.
22 Kind that is lacking details (5)
SPECS – SPEC[ie]S.
24 Conceit, and energy in two forms (3)
EGO – E, GO.

23 comments on “Times Cryptic No 27546 – Saturday 28 December 2019. Fire, fire everywhere.”

  1. Couldn’t get 13d, and now that I see the solution, I’m not surprised that I couldn’t. HO, forsooth. ODYSSEY is cleverly constructed, but with a definition like that all the clever wordplay is, ah, otiose.
  2. I think I failed to crack SPECS despite an alphabet trawl and so I resorted to aids; it was my LOI and I was running low on energy by then.

    ‘Ho’, as in ‘Westward ho!’ indicates movement towards a destination, but in our clue it’s a variation on ‘Whoa!’, an instruction, originally to horses, to stop.

    Edited at 2020-01-04 06:34 am (UTC)

  3. My notes say ‘easy except for 22d’. Like Jack, I failed to crack SPECS so put SHEDS for want of anything better. I put in SHORTHORN without being able to understand HO.
    I liked the use of SR instead of SIS.
    15d amused me. Here in NZ my local town doesn’t have a TIP. It has a ‘Resource Recovery Centre’!
    1. I can still recall moving to a new city back before the World Wide Web caught on, and spending about twenty minutes trying to find out where the local tip was. Turns out they were in the phone book, as I thought they would be, but helpfully filed under “Civic Amenity Centre”…
  4. I suppose speck and spot can be synonyms. 32 minutes in total. I was seeing clearly until the last four, which took nearly 20 minutes. They were OTIOSE, OVERREACH, SHORT HORN and LOI SPECS. COD to the smile-producing INFORMANT. Pity our cricket team hasn’t anybody in form. Thank you B and setter.
  5. I’m somewhat commiserated to find I wasn’t alone in taking ages on 22d SPECS, or giving up on the unknown 13d SHORTHORN. I have “BAH!” written on my sheet!
  6. I solved this on paper and have lots of notes.Three left at 8pm; two left at 8.09 pm and I think I must have finished soon after that.
    The three were OTIOSE, NOOSE and SHORTHORN. I needed the letters from the first two to get the third-with two question marks noted for Shorthorn because it was unparsed until today -thanks for that. I had equated Service with Mass and Short only became clear after Otiose.
    I think we’ve had SPEC/S recently so that did not trouble me.
    I enjoyed this and was determined to finish having got so far.
    David
  7. 23:51. A bit tricky in parts, leading to some nice PDMs – e.g. ITCHY, INFORMANT, SPECS and ASPARAGUS. COD to TEA. Good fun. Thanks Bruce and Setter.
  8. Finished on my iPad whist on plane from Sanya to Shanghai so no notes or time given. 13ac SEALYHAM – ever faithful.

    COD 7dn TEA

    WOD 13dn SHORTHORN – back to the farm.

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  10. I didn’t know SEALYHAM or OTIOSE but worked these two out eventually. Although I thought of SHORT, (after abandoning my PIT), I didn’t manage to get any lower down in SHORTHORN, which left a NOOSE around my neck that snared me beyond my allotted time.

    COD: COXSWAIN.

  11. For reasons unknown I only did this puzzle this morning, and the clue that caught many others out – SPECS – was relatively easy as it appeared elsewhere in the past few days. Serendipity. Hooray!
    Otherwise I quite enjoyed it, and went quickly until most of the SE corner slowed me down (including specs).
  12. I enjoyed this puzzle. No fuss, no dramas, done in 19:59. Liked FINISHING SCHOOL. PDM at LOIRE. Thanks setter and Bruce. HYN Bruce, hope the fires finish quickly. Stay safe.
  14. 29:45. It took me a while to remember sealyham. I struggled to convince myself that overreach could mean outwit. Working out shorthorn also held me up a bit. Nice puzzle.
  15. ….SPECS, which accounted for 2.5 minutes at the end.

    FOI MOTEL
    LOI SPECS
    COD SHORTHORN
    TIME 10:23

  16. 26:37. I seem to have found this very hard, but I solved it at the end of a long day that had involved quite a lot of booze, so I was not at my solving best. Curiously I don’t remember much about it.

    Edited at 2020-01-04 07:51 pm (UTC)

  17. more properly means futile, ineffective, useless, superfluous… and is not listed under any category as a synonym for “redundant” at Thesaurus dot com (and vice versa).

    I wondered about this, but not enough not to make that my answer…

    1. Chambers is my go-to dictionary, because the iPad app is user-friendly. It says:

      otiose /ōˈshi-ōs or -ti-/
      adjective
      (of a word, expression, etc in a particular context) superfluous, redundant
      Unoccupied
      Indolent
      Functionless
      Futile

      So “redundant” will do, it seems.

      1. Yeah, as I noted… but it’s a bit oblique. I didn’t look at Chambers, obviously. I expected, actually, to see it in the synonym list.

        Edited at 2020-01-04 11:32 pm (UTC)

  18. This was relatively easy for me becuse a) it was highly biffable and b) I was in the Naval Section of the Combined Cadet Force at school, and unlike the army and RAF sections we were given the command “HO” instead of “HALT”. When we all paraded together it was a shambles as the RN section wasn’t used to “HALT” and alse we took one step fewer after the command, and it was given on the other foot. Total chaos! Andyf
  19. LOI ‘shorthorn’ without fully parsing it, so thank you blogger. Toyed with ‘botswain’ for 18a, as an alternative spelling for boatswain , as there surely had to be an apple variety BOT , which botflies must eat. The word boatswain must have evolved evolved to bosun via botswain, innit? Until coxswain looked infinitely better. 27mins via this detour.
  20. Chambers only marks the intransitive verb “ho” as obsolete. The interjection is, it seems, current.

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